


but we were something

by still_i_fall



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: 'folklore', F/M, I just..., I mean, I'm Sorry, and technically this could be canon, but i see it as taking place in an alternate universe, i can't tell if this is my best or worst work, i do delve into 2nd person at some point, in which harry doesn't have a really intense childhood crush on allie, so for context, so probably worst, the 1 and illicit affairs vibes all the way, this is all taylor swift's fault, this is never happening again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25565362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall
Summary: He leans in, and she doesn’t lean back, and, she doesn’t know when exactlythisbecame the right time but—God, it’s Harry. It’s always been Harry.-or harry and cassandra and six moments before new ham that might've been
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Cassandra Pressman
Comments: 21
Kudos: 40





	but we were something

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I am not a huge hassandra fan. I just… I listened to _folklore_ and some of the lyrics just hit different when thinking about what hassandra maybe could’ve been (and then [societysgot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/societysgot/pseuds/societysgot) mentioned giving up a kidney for a hassandra one-shot from me? idk). also, their dynamic in those first few episodes—yeah.
> 
> 2\. please imagine Harry saying “cassandra” a different way every time. do it for me. (he will never call her “pressman.” that’s a hallie thing. i’m sorry.)
> 
> 3\. oh my god. _folklore._
> 
> 4\. I’ll be back on my regular hallie bs soon. I promise. (I mean, if you squint, like, _really_ squint, you could probably pretend this is hallie. it’d just be a lot of squinting.)

_in my defense, I have none_

She’s five, and he’s her first real friend.

Allie doesn’t count. And neither does Sam. They’re both family. They’re both all she’s ever known.

But Harry—he’s brand new. He sits down next to her on that first day of school, while her gaze follows her dad out the door, and he compliments her on the blue of her backpack, says it matches her eyes. That makes her smile.

There are crescent moons biting into her palms from the anxiety of the fact that it’s her first ever first day of school, but when he starts talking about his favorite color… suddenly that’s all she can think about too.

Later in the day, she’ll share her box of crayons with him, even though she’s never let Allie touch it. And there’s a promise that slips out of his mouth, gravely, one that’s him saying how careful he’ll be not to snap any of the crayons— _especially the blues._ That makes her smile too.

And at five, Harry Bingham has a lisp. He can’t say her name right, his s’s becoming th’s. She keeps waiting for him to just _give up._

He doesn’t.

(That probably sets some sort of precedent for the future. Probably.)

When it’s time to go home, he’s waving good-bye, and she’s one hundred percent certain it’s meant for her.

But on the second day of school, he sits next to someone else. And he doesn’t compliment her on her shirt, a bright blue. He doesn’t tell her that it matches her eyes. She doesn’t know why she so badly wants him to.

He reads half of this little book out loud to the class, the teacher looking so incredibly impressed, even though it’s nothing, really. Cassandra can do that too. But when she stands up and takes the book from him, starting off right where he was forced to stop, the look on everyone’s face is nothing like impressed.

That’s not Harry’s fault, but…

(Looking back, the start is nothing more than just her being jealous of the fact that he’s not exclusively hers. And that probably sets some sort of precedent for the future too. Probably.)

-

At ten, they’re forced into the same book club.

They share interests. They both have this weird obsession with Harry Potter (once she caught him reading _Half Blood Prince_ the school library. She’d been looking for a copy, and the librarian had pointed her in his direction. It’d scared her, actually, the idea of that being something they could share), and they’re both too smart for their own good.

So their teacher pairs them up and assigns them a book and somehow expects them to just magically get along, as if the last five years haven’t happened. As if they’re not two incredibly competitive, incredibly stubborn people.

“You’re not the boss of me, Cassandra,” he says once, twice, three times in the same conversation. His lisp is faded now, like it was never actually real.

“I’m not trying to be. Your idea is just… bad.”

He glares over at her. She rolls her eyes.

And they’re on opposite sides of the same table, working on opposing projects that are somehow supposed to come together into something cohesive. He won’t share his scissors with her, and she laughs under her breath when his pencil lead snaps.

Finally, “You’re not usually this quiet,” she says, almost bored.

And his features scrunch together, distorted for a moment. “Neither are you.”

She pauses, exhales, inhales. Pauses. “Sorry for—”

He shrugs. “It’s fine.”

“At least let me apologize then.”

“Why?” he asks, a half laugh right there. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

“Maybe,” she breathes out, a rush, a bit messy. She’s only ever messy when it involves him (she just doesn’t realize that yet).

“That’s stupid, Cassandra.”

She wants to ask why it’s stupid to want to do the right thing. She wants to ask what’s so wrong with wanting to be a good person. She wants to hear him talk about intentions and sincerity with language that feels just a little too advanced.

Instead they sit in heavy silence, flipping through pages of a book neither liked, refusing to talk just on principal.

(In the end, she’s gone for a day for a doctor’s appointment. And in the end, it’s her project he decides to follow through with. She tries to tell herself that that doesn’t matter. And when that doesn’t work…)

-

She’s thirteen, and he’s her first kiss.

Maybe it doesn’t count. Because it’s really just them playing pretend at some theater camp up in New York, and he protests all the way up to the actual kissing.

“It’s Cassandra,” he complains, like that’s some sort of explanation as to why he won’t come within six feet of her. “You can’t expect me to—”

“Believe me, Harry, I don’t want to kiss you either. We’re both making sacrifices.”

He turns to her, rolls his eyes. He rolls his eyes a lot. All the time. “I’m not kissing you.”

“It’s called acting. I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to understand, but I guess you have always been terrible at it.” Her words sound like a challenge, and his face morphs into some sort of sneer that might frighten her if she hadn’t already seen it a million times before. Around them there’s a crowd forming. People are probably taking sides. Maybe taking bets.

He scoffs. “Shut up, Cassandra. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All you have to do is kiss me, Harry. That’s it.”

His eyes flit down to her lips for just one moment, and then he’s wetting his lips and narrowing his eyes and tossing his script offstage and all she can think about is how this probably means this is actually happening. 

Oh. This is actually happening.

Her hands shake at her sides, but she refuses to let her voice waver for even a second. And he can’t look her in the eye, no, keeps staring right past her shoulder, at some faraway point, but she’s not sure anyone but her really notices that.

When it happens, when she says her line, and he says his line. When their lips meet somewhere in the middle, a bit hesitant, a bit light, a bit soft, it’s everything and nothing like what she thought it would be. Everything around her is suddenly silent, the only sound her heartbeat loud in her ears, her heart sitting on the edge of her sleeve, just waiting for those stupid thoughts of a stupid boy—who shouldn’t matter to her anywhere near as much as he does—to pick it up and take it away. 

None of this should matter, but… 

(Later, backstage when no one else is around, he leans in and she leans in too, and that’s her second kiss. Or maybe it’s her first. She’s not really sure.)

-

At sixteen, they go skinny dipping together out at Minas Pond.

Everyone’s camping out there, tents pitched up in the forest. Fake permits that no one’s actually going to be checking for anyway. Half hidden boxes of wine and White Claws and cans of beer. Red solo cups that Cassandra can’t help thinking look tacky. Blue was always more her color.

And it’s been a good day so far. A really good day. She had a doctor’s appointment in the morning that went really well, and she got lunch at that one restaurant downtown that she really likes, and…

For once in her life, Cassandra is willing to maybe do the wrong thing.

So when Lexie offers her a cup full of cheap wine, Cassandra closes her eyes and downs half the cup a little too quickly. And when Jason makes her some fruity drink, the two of them standing close and staring out onto the lake, the rest of his friends and the rest of her friends surrounding them, she takes it with a loose smile.

And Harry Bingham smiles at her from faraway, an eyebrow raised, his head tilted. It’s stupid how much that makes her heart flutter, how everything suddenly feels warm. How she could close her eyes and get lost in this moment.

The sun sets over the lake, and in the dark, everyone sits around a slowly dying campfire, talking too loudly, roasting marshmallows and breathing in smoke. Tomorrow, she’s going to go home smelling like fire, and she won’t know how exactly to explain that to Allie, so she probably just won’t.

People start slipping away slowly, disappearing in pairs or groups to messily set up tents.

And she moves closer to him, to Harry, pulling her gaze away from the campfire and instead focusing on him, his silhouette lit up in the dying light—the curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, and the highpoints of his cheeks. “So where’s Kelly?” she asks, like it’s a question that doesn’t matter as much as it does.

He blinks over at her. He shrugs. “On vacation, I think. I don’t know. She’s not really my problem anymore.

Oh. “And that means…?”

Harry rolls his eyes, leaning a little too close to her. “I think you know what that means, Cassandra.” He pauses, staring at her. “We’re broken up.”

“Sorry,” she breathes out, a little light. The sun’s gone but the air around her has never felt warmer. She doesn’t know why.

“It’s okay.”

He’s studying, his eyes everywhere, and she’s trying to make that not matter. And the pond, Minas pond, is right there, almost close enough to touch. She feels light, like she’s floating, like there’s nothing wrong with her, nothing at all.

So when she stands up, she pulls him with her, because he was going to follow her anyway, and when she runs, towards the water, he’s right there beside her, laughing quietly, maybe only to himself. Maybe.

“Cassandra, what are you doing?” he asks, breathless, and they’re standing out on the dock now, and the moon is lighting up the sky, but it’s dark, so dark, and maybe none of this is real, maybe tomorrow she can cast this whole night off as some distant dream.

“Close your eyes,” she commands, and she’s pulling off her t-shirt, slipping off her shorts, and he’s staring down at the dock, something like a smile on his face, maybe. It’s dark. She can’t see.

And the water is cold, and she’s breathless, leaning her head back, staring up at the sky, at the stars, picking them apart from everything else. And Cassandra’s always known that she’s a star, maybe not the brightest, maybe not the biggest, but still so undeniably _there._ And her eyes are closed and everything’s silent for a moment until suddenly the water around her moves, and he’s right _there,_ and—

All of this is her doing the _wrong thing._ Obviously.

-

She’s seventeen, and he’s her first time.

They’re counselors at that stupid theater camp up in New York, and it’s the very start of summer, the weather still comfortably warm somehow, things yet to give way to unfavorable heat. The camp is only for a couple of weeks. Maybe they’ll all be out of there by the time the weather does turn.

They’re partnered up for a project, and when that goes well, they get drunk together at a party. Or half-drunk, maybe. Not all the way there, just barely fuzzy around the edges.

And he makes a joke—something sharp and biting—that makes her laugh, and then he’s pulling her away to the room he’s staying in, and she realizes that the glaring truth is that she doesn’t want him anywhere but where he is _right now._

He’s with Kelly, probably. She’s pretty sure that they’re _on_ right now, in terms of their relationship. And Cassandra should care. She should care that this is all wrong, that it doesn’t matter that they’re not home, that it doesn’t matter that in New York she can almost pretend they’re different people entirely.

His lips are on her neck. His lips are on her lips. He’s breathing out her name like he’s himself and only himself, and…

She can’t pretend like she’s anyone else either.

(Things have never been simple with Harry. Ever. It makes sense that this isn’t simple. It makes sense that they’re too caught up to remember that this is _wrong._ It makes sense that neither really seem to care, or at least care enough to stop before— )

“I’m,” she starts, breathless, her eyes flitting up and down his face, to his lips, always back to his lips.

“Me too,” he cuts in, gently.

She pauses. “Oh.”

“Waiting,” he says. “For the right time.”

“Yeah,” she breathes out slowly. He won’t look away from her. She’s not sure she wants him to. “Me too.”

He leans in, and she doesn’t lean back, and she doesn’t know when exactly _this_ became the right time but—

God, it’s Harry. It’s always been Harry.

-

_(an interlude.)_

For forever after this, you’ll look at her and see summer.

The edge of summer, just as the heat breaks, standing in an ice cream parlor two towns over while Kelly vacations on the coast. The middle of summer, sitting up in your room, your mom and sister in the Hamptons, your dad on the west coast. Everything quiet and her slipping out the bedroom window and down the trellis because someone’s at the door. The end of summer, a fight over college, something vicious said in the dark, her scoffing and sighing and yelling as loudly as you’ve ever heard her. And you wonder what’s wrong with you because you don’t want to leave even though everything about the two of you is a mess.

Now the heat is gone, and you remember a night where the sky is a deep purple, and she has her feet in the creek, and there’s a picnic blanket somewhere behind you, and you’d told her that a picnic was the most basic thing the two of you could do together, but you hadn’t meant it, not really, and she could probably tell.

It’s Cassandra. She can always tell.

In the middle of the night, as August fades into just a memory, you apply to Yale because that’s her thing, and you want her to be _your_ thing. You don’t mention it to anyone because your dad had gone to Harvard and your mom had gone to Harvard, so college isn’t really a decision you get to make, but—

If it was…

(Sometimes you hate her, and sometimes you think you might… It doesn’t matter. No, because no matter what, you’d always choose Cassandra. And that’s what’s wrong with you.)

-

She’s eighteen, and he says _I love you._

She’s at one of his parties. She told her parents she was going over to Helena’s, and she told Allie something about a study date with a mystery guy she met on a tour of Yale. When’s Allie’s going to realize that guy doesn’t exist? Hopefully never.

And it’s already loud when she’s walking up the front path. The steps are illuminated by little lights off to the side. They cast shadows across the path that almost make things look serene. Almost, if you can ignore the Doja Cat song playing too loud in the background of everything.

Her birthday was two days ago. He gave her an antique locket, like it was nothing, a sheepish smile eating away at his face. And for a second, it didn’t matter that they were hidden away in the woods, that he had a girlfriend, a girlfriend who is nothing but nice to everyone. Just for a second, none of that mattered.

The front door is unlocked and wide open, Luke and Helena right off to the side, talking about something with hushed voices and wide smiles. They do that a lot, right out in the open, like it doesn’t matter that people can see. Like they don’t care.

And then Harry is there, right in front of her, holding a red solo cup of something she bets is expensive, something he’s hiding away from the rest of the party. That sounds like something he would do. It sounds like something he’s done.

“Cassandra Pressman,” he says, loud enough for someone to turn to look. She tries to pretend like she doesn’t care. He’s drunk, probably. That’s why he doesn’t care.

“Hi, Harry.”

He blinks over at her, this grin wide and bright on his face, and that’s all there is between them for a moment, long enough for her to count down from five in her head. Only suddenly he’s taking her hand—right in front of everyone—and pulling her up the stairs to where the party isn’t happening, and the people aren’t around. He’s pulling her into his room, the two of them suddenly standing face to face close to the blue of his bed.

(It’s all blue, and she can’t stop thinking about being five and him sitting down next to her on the first day of school and complimenting her backpack.)

And he won’t stop staring at her.

“What,” she finally says, a half laugh caught in her throat, a smile forming on her face, just ‘cause she can’t help it.

“I love you,” he says simply, like it’s this obvious thing. This easy thing. This light thing that he can say as if it’s nothing at all, just an observation. A lie he can tell because words have always come so quickly to him.

He doesn’t love her. He loves feeling like he’s special. He loves having something that no one else knows he has. He loves the fact that she’s all summer in his eyes, because summer is fading from their memories, and it’s fading fast, and soon she’s all he’s going to have left of it.

(A summer of firsts. A summer of nights under the stars, scars from mosquito bites, skin pink from sun burns. She smells like Coppertone, and he smells like that expensive perfume her grandmother gave her forever ago. A summer of arguments and sex and arguments and sex and… A summer far away from West Ham, full of half dreams that don’t even really make sense anymore.)

“You don’t love me,” she says slowly, carefully, hoping he understands each word.

But he blinks over her, his head tilted just barely to the side. “No,” he says, and his eyes are so fucking bright. God, why is he like this. Why is it always him? “Cassandra, I love you.”

She doesn’t know what to say. Maybe before she would’ve believed him—when they were five, or thirteen, or even seventeen. Now, though, now she’s not that stupid.

Because all they are is some secret both of them are too desperately holding onto. And he can pretend, pretend like there’s a possibility for the future, but she doesn’t want to live in that world. She doesn’t want to live in that world with him.

(So what if his locket hangs around her neck. So what if there’s a mark on her neck that he left. So what if he’s all she’s thought about for months now. So fucking what. She swears she’s not scared. She’s not scared of _them,_ whatever _them_ is or could one day be. Really.

Really.)

She backs out of his bedroom, walks down the stairs, pushing past a couple making out against the bannister. He doesn’t follow her. That’s what she wanted.

Senior year is all that’s left. After that, he’ll only live to haunt her in those a million what-ifs that won’t ever not exist in her mind. After that, the two of them and whatever they were for those few fleeting moments will only ever live in the past.

And that’s okay because she’s not five or thirteen or seventeen anymore. She knows an ending when she sees one.

_for never leaving well enough alone_

**Author's Note:**

> lol, and then they go to new ham and she dies.
> 
> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hallieownsme)


End file.
